Witcher Warrior Scholar Spy

“They say the Spy deals in half-truths,

With a tongue so smooth it feels of silk.”

Shen cursed, the white light in his palms sparking and falling flat again. “Damn it, Babel, how does this work? You were a useless teacher!”

The cart Shen rode in hit another pothole and sent his torso forward. Shen decided to try and use his Inheritance some other time, not when stress was consuming him so wholly. Instead, he chose to shift his focus and prepare himself to bind his magic to a new Well.

He knew, logically, that it was not a betrayal of his Inheritance to connect to another Well of power. Yet, still, it was a difficult thing to give yourself to a God you had not grown up with. Krohnic was a Sovereign God. He was a being worthy of respect and adoration. The Well Shen was heading to was not quite lesser, but it was less than the Well of Krohnic. It was, after all, the power of Contraria’s Well that allowed them to maintain their independent status and avoid the wars of the continent. Time was a unique Domain that only a single God commanded.

The process of connecting to a Well was simple. You kneel, pray, and ask to be taken under the wing of the God who fuels the Well. And then, they ask something of you in return. It isn’t like that with a native Well—a Well you are connected to from bloodlines and birthright. That power was freely given. It was the reason why countries went to war over them, why cities rose and fell around them, and why one would traverse the Horrid Ocean and settle on an unforgiving island like Contraria.

Shen frowned. The Well in Listaire was the Well of Xolo, one of many elemental-focused Gods that had a secondary Domain: sickness. Fire and illness. It wasn’t Shen’s first choice, but it would have to do. He needed a way to protect himself. Heading to Tayaran without a Well simply wasn’t an option. The road was long and filled with dangers.

Once Shen found Kuala, they’d have to find Arkim—and if Shen could get his Inheritance to work by then, it’d not only be a miracle, but it would simplify the matter. The Spy’s Inheritance was a simple thing. It was a connection to the world and was fueled by communication. All Shen needed to do was manifest it, and he would know where he needed to go.

He tried not to focus too much on his failure. He was supposed to have learned from Babel. However, Babel was a useless man with impossible standards and a penchant for the sadistic. Shen thought of the times they were supposed to meet up and how Babel would spend all his time comparing Shen to Olea. How the man took every opportunity to tear her down, no matter what she did.

Once upon a time, Shen would have been in too much awe to say anything. But toward the end? Before leaving for the continent? Shen and Babel hardly spoke at all, and when they did, it was hardly friendly. Babel was an enigma. Growing up, he spent most of his time either with the King or with Olea—and it didn’t help that he looked as odd as he acted. That wasn’t to say Babel was ugly. He was simply a certain kind of attractive—the kind one didn’t want to acknowledge much at all. He was lithe and graceful but pale and dark-haired. He was tall, but his dark eyes had a way of tearing Shen down, brick by brick. As if he was the predator and Shen was the prey. Shen didn’t think the man could be described as handsome, but he was surely magnetic. All Spies were.

Though Shen hadn’t met the Spy before Babel, he was sure not all of them were as hateful as the man. They may have been known as conniving and selfish but never needlessly cruel. Not as far as Shen knew.

The thought of Babel brings back the memory of one of the last times Shen saw Olea. They were teenagers, seventeen and soon to reach majority. Shen still remembered the scowl on Babel’s face as he hissed insults at Olea.

“What?” he’d said, jabbing his finger into her chest accusingly. “You think you’re too good to learn from me now? You think you’re too smart? Too skilled?”

Shen thought back to how Olea’s eyes were dull and sunken, how her usually cold personality was absent, and instead, it almost looked like she was afraid. Perhaps that should have been Shen’s first clue that he should have left his hiding place and intervened. He was old enough to have a spine. Old enough to understand that what was happening was a dark thing.

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He didn’t, though. He stayed, ducked behind one of the wide pillars of the castle, and sunk into its shadow.

“What a joke, you idiotic child,” Babel growled, pulling his hand back to his side. “Do you think you deserve your Inheritance? Never, not once, have you been worthy.”

It was then Shen looked back to Olea, wanting her to speak up—to fight back. To be the Olea she was with him when they were alone. But Shen was instead caught in Olea’s gaze. She had spotted him, seen him looking in on her life like a voyeur. And she didn’t look happy. She didn’t look much of anything at all.

That was when Babel brought his hand back, striking Olea across the face. Shen had to cover his mouth to prevent his gasp from escaping.

“You will look at me when I am talking to you, or you will look nowhere at all, am I clear?”

Shen was forcibly brought back to the present by the shiver that went down his spine. He decided it would do no good to dwell on that memory now and instead looked out at the slow-moving horizon. The cart itself was moving quite fast, and he was the only passenger the cart driver had been able to secure to Listaire, which was all the better for Shen, who would rather mull over his options in solitude.

Though, even as he tried to remove the thought of Olea from his mind, he found himself thinking of the past yet again. Of how Olea had been meant to be one of his closest confidantes, how she was the Witcher to his Spy. The one meant to protect him. The one meant to make his plans come to life. Instead, she’d left them all behind. Even before he had felt the pull of the university, Olea was gone. And in her place stood Mara, sweet and gentle Mara. Mara, who would sacrifice without being asked. Mara, who was soft where Olea was sharp. Mara, who was easy to love. Olea, who made it a challenge on her best days. It made Shen wonder what it would have been like were Mara the Witcher.

But that thought was pointless for many reasons, not the least of which was that it would require Mara to be someone else. Mara, the perfect princess, a beacon for her people and Heroes alike, would not do well as a soldier against the Doom. Because for all the fancy titles, that’s what the Heroes were.

Krohnic had gifted the Heroic lineages with power but at the cost of protecting his lands. The Heroes were generals in the war, on the frontline and leading the charge against Krohnic’s eternal enemy, Draucus, the cause of the Doom. The Heroes would destroy the Doom’s core with a new Illustra. Every iteration of the Four Heroes of Exile, when their time came, would then summon their people home to the time in which they now belonged. It happened every hundred or so years, again and again, every time Draucus corralled enough power from the beings in the Horrid Ocean.

Shen cursed that this was the one time he’d done so in mere decades instead of centuries.

When the Doom was chased off, the Heroes received titles and funds to last for a hundred years. The next time the Doom returned, their descendants did it all over again. Again and again and again.

Three millennia of this made for a well-documented routine. The Heroes learned of their Inheritance, they felt the Call of Exile, they fled, and their home was ripped from them and sealed into Illustra. Then, they rebuilt the very artifact that cut off their magic. They headed to the Grotto of Light, combined their strengths to craft a new Illustra, and then they returned to Contraria, where they trekked through the Doom and hunted down its core.

It was simple but far from easy. Routine but not quick. The shortest time to defeat the Doom was by the prior incarnations, and they had taken three months to bring their people home. One to find each other, one to find the Grotto and return to Contraria, and one to destroy the Doom’s core. The longest it had taken was twenty years.

Shen huffed, bringing his hands up to his face, examining the ridges on his skin and the heavy weight of the rings on his fingers. He would have to sell one in Listaire to get enough Drigs to cross Yuhaul and get into Tayaran.

“If Babel could do it, so can I,” he grumbled.

Listaire was days away, and Shen was of a dedicated sort. He wasn’t the Scholar, but he was a scholar. His education had taken him years of meticulous study. He could surely best Babel at his own Inheritance.

The sun was setting when he finally got something more than the sparks of light he’d manifested before. The illusory bird was small, no larger than his thumb, but it existed. Even if it weren’t the pale white glow he’d come to expect of the Spy’s magic. It was, instead, a dull blue.

He chose not to question that and instead began focusing on the way his power flowed within him. How, even without his Well, he could feel the power in his veins. How it was begging to manifest. How it was overflowing. How Shen had a need to know it, to connect with it. He felt something inside of him click into place.

That was when a full-sized sparrow found its way out of Shen’s palms.

Its feathers were a vibrant blue, and it shuffled as it stood there—though it did not make a sound.

Shen grinned, then told the sparrow, “Find Kuala. Let me know where she’s gone.”

The bird fluttered its wings and took off to the west. Shen smiled. “She’s still in Tayaran, then.”